I think you could spend your whole life exploring California and never quite see it all.  I have many favourite areas, the Sierras, Sequoia National Park, Joshua Tree but Big Sur has captured my heart the most. As a vast generalisation, for those of you who don’t know California very well, it’s north along the coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco, just below Monterey.

In our area of Southern California the beaches are lovely but they’re just straight strips of sand.  No cliffs, tide pools or rocks to explore.  Along Big Sur not only are the views breathtaking, but the rugged beaches are empty, there are wonderful crafty shops along the way such as Nepenthe, cafes such as the Big Sur Bakery and winding roads which make sure you drive slowly and take in absolutely everything.

And one day, I want to stay at the Post Ranch Inn.  It will have to be for an extremely special occasion, click through and take a look at the rooms, heaven on earth.  Just one night in their Cliff room will be fine!

During the drive along Big Sur, there are lots of stops but McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park is a must.  It’s a short walk down to the cliffs over looking the bay.  The colour of the water is just amazing.

I spent a little while looking through all my photos of California and picked this one for Tara’s The Gallery.  This is the relaxed side of California, away from cars, people, smog, stress.

California has so much to offer and at risk of sounding like a Tourist Information Center, the main problem is, where do you start?

Outside my front door, well two blocks from our house, is this:

No, I can’t quite believe it either.

I pinch myself most days in disbelief that we can be quite so lucky.  At the moment, the peninsula is covered in Spring Break tourists, college students determined to enjoy their holidays.  In a couple of weeks time, it will be quiet again before the summer tourists arrive.

And we’re headed to the UK for Easter, where it’s raining.  We must be mad.  We could spend the week on the beach.  It never, ever gets boring.

I have received some very strange observations about my appearance recently which has led me to believe that there must be a certain look to English women.

My first experience was being told at a party that I looked liked ‘Steve Martin’s ex-wife.’  I knew whom the person meant but neither of us could remember the woman’s name.  We stood there for a few minutes, drinking our wine and racking our brains trying to figure it out but couldn’t.  I’ve just looked it up; it was Victoria Tennant, an English actress.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, a complete stranger came up to me and told me I looked like Emma Thompson.  He also told me where he lived and that I could pop in anytime.  Fancy that!

When we were skiing, I was queuing for lunch when a woman came up to me and said ‘I know you, don’t I?  You’re an actress aren’t you?’  I was tempted to reply, ‘yes, you may have seen me in Tomb Raider or Mr and Mrs Smith’ but I just got all flustered and embarrassed and said no.  I returned to the table and told my family who all burst out laughing. You?  They thought you were an actress?  Once they’d all picked themselves off the floor from laughing so hard, we headed back out to the slopes.

I don’t think I look anything like Emma Thompson or Victoria Tennant but perhaps there is an English ‘look’ that I have which would explain why I stand out here amongst California Girls.

Just in case you think this is all going to my head and that I’m sitting here feeling smug and waiting to be compared to Kate Winslet next, I’ll fill you in on my experience on Tuesday.  I booked a post Christmas, the little buggers have gone back to school facial.  It was supposed to be a treat, I can’t remember the last time I had one.  As I was lying there, a lovely warm heating pad under my back, New Age music tinkling away, I completely relaxed, I deserved this, I needed this tiny bit of luxury.  Then the therapist started pointing out where I needed botox and filler on my face. I beg your pardon? What did you just say?  My treat was turning into a horror film.

I guess I am in the land of perfection; I just hadn’t come across it yet.  Not first hand anyway.

So, I may look like a classic English lady but apparently one that needs a bit of work.  At least now I have the name of a good plastic surgeon.  The therapist gave me that too.

My youngest son is a skateboarder and a BMX rider.  He wrecks his shoes.

For the first few years of his life we headed into Clarks, England’s main children’s shoe shop, to make sure the computer measured his feet correctly.  Then the best black leather shoes were chosen to fit his feet perfectly so he would be smart for school.

On arrival in California, the Clarks’ black leather shoes were immediately ditched.  Not only was black leather not appropriate here but everyone was wearing canvas skateboarding shoes plus there’s no uniform, no need to look smart.

In the back of my mind, I’ve been worried.  Worried about the spotty teenager in the surf shop who measures my son’s feet and says ‘well dude, I think he, like, maybe, well could be a 2 or even a 3.’  How did I go from the thirty minute fitting at Clarks with the manager coming out to approve the size to ‘dude, you’re a 2?’

Last week, I was invited to tour etnies as part of an OC Family bloggers event.  I didn’t know anything about etnies, I’d grouped it together with all the other surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding brands.  Nice shoes, nice designs and that’s about it.  What a great surprise to find out that a Frenchman and an Englishman founded the company.  How wonderful to have a European influence on the skateboarding industry right here in Orange County.

On arrival, the first thing that hit me was the design of the building.  It’s beautiful, all curves and not a straight line in sight – just like skateboarding.

The founder of etnies, Pierre André Senizergues was there to meet us and explain the philosophy behind the company and their products along with Don Brown, etnies’ marketing guru and fellow Brit (Don is from Brighton).  As skateboarders in Europe in the 80s, Pierre and Don headed out to California to follow their love of the sport and together started designing shoes that would last because ‘skateboarding is the worst thing that can happen to a pair of shoes.’

Etnies do a great deal of biomechanics research on the impact skateboarding has on the body.  Skateboarding has a force of 17 times your body weight on your feet when you land.  The closest another sport comes to that is when a basketball player does a slam-dunk.  Their biomechanics lab was fascinating and we watched as a skateboarder, covered in sensors, performed a trick and the computer analyzed his movements and where the body takes the most impact.

I liked the fact hat the company is environmentally friendly, incredibly so.  Along with that I appreciated how fascinated they were with a group of women, all bloggers, all with children and how we all have our own individual voices here in Orange County.

Of course, now I’m re-thinking what my son wears when he’s skateboarding and BMX riding.   It’s good to know that there is a company out there putting so much thought into the impact the sport has on the body.

My favourite quote of the day?  From Pierre André Senizergues:

Skateboarding, like life, is all about balance.

Suz Broughton from Alive in Wonderland created a great video of our etnies day.

Marcy at The Glamorous Life was also in attendance.

See a special etnies promotion on Marcy’s blog.

We do.  We live in the middle of chaos.  On Friday and Saturday nights, parties rage, music thumps, groups of people on bicycles cruise by looking for parties to attend.  We moved here from a quiet English village.  A village so small, there was no street lighting, at night it was pitch black and a torch/flashlight was required to make it home from the only entertainment available – the village pub.

Here, it is never quiet, never dark.  Sometimes police helicopters fly overhead, their spotlights trained on an area near our house, trying to find someone.  On the last occasion, a villain had absconded from the local supermarket with a trolley full of vodka.  That crime had the Newport Beach police helicopter in hot pursuit and hovering above our house.

It sounds terrible!  But we love it.  We love the energy.  Locals call it the ‘war zone’ and I’m so used to this term that I’ve never given it much thought.  We could be living in a nice, suburban area of the peninsula and maybe at some point we’ll move somewhere more sensible but at the moment this is where we’ve ended up.

Susanna Scott, the creator of British Mummy Bloggers, recently told me she had lived in the ‘war zone’ during her time in Newport Beach (Susanna also worked at The Spaghetti Factory!)  I laughingly told her that she’d inspired me to write a blog post explaining the term.

Along with the chaos, we also have a lovely group of neighbours who hang out and chat.  On Saturday night we poured glasses of wine, sat out on our patio and soaked up the atmosphere. The next thing we knew, a neighbour we’d never met before walked by, said hello and sat down.  We poured him a glass of wine and laughed about the antics going on across the road.  Then a friend of his happened to be walking by, he sat down as well, another glass of wine was poured.  And so it continued.

Sunday mornings are the most entertaining.  As I make waffles, girls appear from the house across the street, dressed in their Saturday night best, creeping away from where they’ve just stayed the night.  The three single guys across from us seem to do quite well!  We enjoy watching the ‘walk of shame.’ Some girls hold their head up high, some come out looking decidedly the worse for wear, a little sheepish and with their hair stuck up in the air.

I don’t think I could ever go back to living in a place without energy.  Yes, it gets a little crazy at times.  The Fourth of July was like something I’d never seen, an endless array of drunken people in bikinis vying for attention.  It’s rare for it to be that intense, usually it’s just mellow surfers and college students creating the energy.

So yes, Susannah, we live in the ‘war zone’ for better or worse.  At least it gives me some great material for my blog!

Red Magazine will be featuring Susannah’s British Mummy Blogger network in the January issue, in shops on 1st December, make sure you grab a copy!

I’m flying home for a few days tomorrow.  I don’t really need to go home.  I’m not missing the weather, the culture, the food or anything else, not yet.  But I do miss my friends.  I miss my girlfriends who have supported me in the move to the US, who have shown that wherever I am in the world, they will email, text or phone and support me.  So, I want to go home, just for a few days, check in with them and say thank you for being there.  We’ll sit in Costa Coffee in Salisbury, order a latte, chat endlessly and catch up.

One of the toughest things about moving has been not having my friends around me or my support network, especially a support network of mums.

I started my blog as an outlet for my experiences, I didn’t really expect anyone to read it, it was more for me than anyone else.  But because of my blog I’ve discovered there is a wonderful expat blogging community and I now read the posts of other British Mums living in the US, Bosnia,  and all over the world.  I’ve also been featured on ExpatMumsBlog.com a great site for expat mum bloggers.

Another great site I’ve come across is Expatify, a directory of all expat blogs listed by country.  It’s a great place to start when you’re looking for people to follow and compare experiences.

Calif Lorna has also given me the opportunity to meet Orange County mom bloggers.  Suz Broughton and Marcy Massura invited me to join Blog Crush, a local group of mom bloggers and this in turn has led to me being invited to blog for OC Family, a magazine and web site for Orange County families.  I’ll be blogging over there as well as on my own blog.  I think my stories there will have more of an Orange County focus and if you’re wondering how I ended up in the wonderful Orange County in the first place, I’ve explained it all there.

This week we had the opportunity to chat on OC Family Radio with some of the other women that have joined their network of Orange County mom bloggers.  It’s an amazing list of women, I’m honored to be a part of it.

Friendships change and grow over the years, so for me it’s been a fascinating time, keeping up with my friends from the UK and developing new relationships.  I have my blog to thank for that.  It’s something completely unexpected.

I’ve changed.  I know I have.  Since moving to California, I hang out with celebrities in LA and neglect my friends.  Well, that’s what I did on Friday night anyway.  A group of bloggers were very kindly invited to the set of Accidentally on Purpose, a new sitcom from CBS which airs on Monday nights.  The story line focuses on Billy (Jenna Elfman) falling pregnant after a one-night stand with a younger guy and the way they handle the situation.

The cast is amazing Jenna Elfman, Ashley Jensen, Jon Foster, Grant Show, Lennon Parham and Nicolas Wright so I couldn’t resist the invitation to hang out on set and watch them tape the show.  The taping takes place on the CBS lot in Studio City, the same lot where they taped Seinfeld.

I invited my friend Greg Hernandez from Greg In Hollywood and we had a blast chatting to the stars of the show, tweeting and taking photographs.

The ‘daddy’ in the show, Jon Foster, came over to sit and chat first.  It was great to hear his opinions on his character and wanting to have a stand up guy on television for other twenty something men to look up to.  Greg was smitten and made him his Morning Man yesterday!

As a huge Melrose Place fan (the old series), I have to confess I was rather intimidated when Grant Show came over to talk to us.  What a lovely guy! I’m so used to him brooding or handsomely scowling but he was so relaxed chatting to us, happy to take photos and then quickly helping out to move a piece of furniture that was in the way for the group photo.  Not at all what I expected!  Here he is with Greg:

It’s great to see a show with a heavy female influence and know that these women are all at the top of their game.  As we watched the taping from the show floor, the stars mingled with us and chatted.  I was delighted to meet Ashley Jensen, a fellow Brit, I’ve been a huge fan, even before Extras and Ugly Betty.  We watched a cafe scene being taped featuring the three women and although there were line changes and re-takes, I was staggered at how well they delivered their lines time after time.  No mistakes, no fluffs, with perfect comic timing.

The taping continued in various parts of the studio.  The sets are absolutely beautiful and I was amazed by the attention to detail.

Here Nicolas Wright (think Kramer from Seinfeld), Jon Foster, and Jenna Elfman chat before the taping.

A huge thank you to CBS for letting us come and explore the set for a few hours and to the cast and crew for being so generous with their time.  It was much appreciated.

I’m sure Accidentally on Purpose will be heading overseas soon, so if you don’t live in the US, keep a look out, there’s a great new show headed your way.

And if you live in the US, Monday nights on CBS is the place to be!

You’d think after 20 years of visiting or living in America there’d be no more misunderstandings.  You’ve worked them all out.  Faucet = tap, elevator = lift and so on.  But every now and then something catches me out and a small cultural misunderstanding takes place.

This time it was Coffee Cake.

I love coffee, particularly lattes and am completely unable to get through the day without having one.  So much so, that I don’t even have to order at my local café, when I walk through the door they start making my large, non-fat, latte.  And if I haven’t visited for a few days, the barista harasses me if he cycles by me on the boardwalk.  No, that’s not embarrassing at all.

And yet, I hate coffee flavoured things.  Really hate, not just a mild distaste, I loathe coffee flavoured cakes and chocolates.

After attending a school event last week, we were invited to meet other parents over coffee and Coffee Cake.  I thought that was a strange choice.  Not everyone likes coffee, so a cake made of this flavour was quite restricting.  As we entered the hall, I could see the cake and everyone was taking a piece and announcing how delicious it was.  I was surprised that so many people liked Coffee Cake.

I was offered a piece but declined.  Danny however, did take a piece.  That surprised me.  Danny doesn’t even drink coffee, hates it, but he knew this was coffee cake.  He then said ‘this is really good, you should have some.’  When I expressed surprise that he was enjoying something that was coffee flavoured, he looked at me and burst out laughing.

‘You think this has coffee in it, don’t you?’

Well, it was called Coffee Cake, what else was I supposed to think?

Now I know, Coffee Cake does not contain coffee.  Coffee Cake is cake that goes with coffee

Surf lessons for dogs?  Of course!  How else is your pooch going to be ready for the Surf Dog Contest in Huntington Beach on 11th October?!

I saw this advertised last week and was fascinated.  Can you actually teach a dog to surf?  Or, is it more a case of teaching the dog’s owner how to get the dog on the surfboard and pushing them into the shore on a wave?

I took a look at the rules and regulations for the contest and loved them:

The point system is very clear: standing on all fours + 5, sitting + 3 and lying down + 2 .

Skills are assessed too:  a dog riding in white water + 6, dogs gaining recovery (almost falling off) + 1, if the dog pulls a maneuver – (360 or 180 or riding backwards) + 1, longest ride + 5 and biggest wave + 5.

If your dog hasn’t mastered the art of surfing completely before the competition, they can still take part.  There’s fun awards too for best trick, best wipeout, best crowd pleaser and best style.

Dog Fun!:
Lord Of Dogtown: Buddy The Amazing Surfing Dog

The judges have thought of everything, in the event of a tie the dog riding the biggest wave will be the winner

The great thing is that this event benefits local dog charities, so not only will everyone have great fun, they’ll raise some money too.

Hang Loose!

Shock Cousteau, Cutty Spark, Spark N Ride and Amply Endowed are some of my favourite electrically inspired names Duffy owners create for their boats.

Newport Harbor is home to the Duffy Electric Boat.  They’re unique boats with an awning on top used mainly for cruising around the harbor in a very civilized manner, drinking cocktails, eating appetizers or popping into a restaurant for dinner.

Forget the Prius — Southern California has another unique electrical vehicle.

Watt, ohm, current, amp and charge are all a good start for a name but there are many, many more, as you can see…

Ohm My God!

Watt Do You Think?

Charging Around

Currently Popular

Amp Even More

I’m happy to add some!  If you have a Duffy, please send me a photo and I’ll include you in the list.